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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

This is the thread for proud Slackware users. We publish here our stories concerning computing. Each story ends the same: one becomes Slackware user and is very proud.

It isn’t necessary to write your story from the scratch if you published it in some other thread before. In such a case just put here a link to your post from that other thread. You may also add some information here if something changed in your computing experience since you wrote your original story.

***

To initiate the thread I collected four stories found in two different threads (in a chronological order):

This week, I wanted to try Aptosid (Debian-based distro). So, I installed it, tried it out, and encountered a hell of a problems. The biggest and most annoying problem was that I could not compile Wine from source. I used 64-bit Aptosid, and tried to install all possible kind of multiarch-packages from Debian/Aptosid via apt-get *:i386 e.t.c. And of course, one of the package I needed was called something like "ia32-lib-dev", but that package is deprecated... My only choice was to create a 32-bit chroot environment, but to hell with it!

Deleted all Aptosid/Debian files, names, and Aptosid/Debian feeling from the computer. Back with Slackware 64bit. Enabled multiarch via Alienbobs mutlilib-packages and compat32-packages, compiled Wine and I am so fucking happy!

I started with Ubuntu out of curiosity. It was a bug orgy. The system finally self-destroyed by itself and my backups proved unreliable because a bug of the backup app.

Then I moved to Debian, because I liked the underlying concept behind Ubuntu and Debian was supposed to be like the Stable version of Ubuntu. It worked more or less well and I liked it. However, clumsy development policies about bug sparing and a spared bug that killed thousands of my files (I had a backup anyway) pushed me to try other alternatives.

I moved to Slackware because I want improved reliability. I still use other distributions and operating systems (namely Knoppix and OpenBSD) but Slackware remains my main choice for most tasks.

Thank you for your contribution to that thread and for a nice blog. It’s very exciting to know that there are some theologians among us. I’m the philosopher so our lines of business are at the same time very similar and completely different.

For example we both like puzzles. Maybe the thread Puzzles & Jokes (Off-Topic Topic) will meet your interests. For your mental health follow “The Guide” section from the first post there and skip the posts from #12 to #24.

We both use also the older machines. I prefer second hand IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads from T and X series. Linux works great on the older machines. Using them is opposite to the current trends to turn the natural resources into the consumer goods and then – after a year – into a trash on a garbage dump.

Your blog is a bit old so I believe you use now some newer Slackware Linux version such as 13.37 or 14.0 though of course the older Slackware releases are still supported so you can stay with them if you like them.

kikinovak,

At the beginning I included in the initial post your story as well as a few other stories published in 2011 but then I stated that all of them are a bit old so maybe their authors would like to add to them some new content. So I decided to skip those older stories. I’m very glad now that you contributed our “Slackware pride thread”.

I see I have to be very cautious discussing with you because you trained with the Navy SEALs. My combat experience is more humble – I have on my bookshelf “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu but I didn’t read it yet so I’m an autodidact in those matters. (Sometimes I dream that Sun Tzu still lives and we have the opportunity to discuss the art of war.)

You wrote a huge book about Linux command line and I was a leading editor in a Linux-oriented quarterly for five years. I published also some articles about Linux here and there. That’s the next similarity between us.

An you’re the next guy here using the “sandbox” machines. Respect, man!

I started with Red Hat 6.x sometime around 1999 or 2000. I'd had some exposure to Unix-like systems from summer lab jobs in college and I was looking for something to play around with. Pretty soon I used Linux more or less exclusively at home.

Somewhere in the 2002 timeframe, I tried Slack 8 or 8.1. I think I'd gotten the impressio, though I don't know from where, that Slack was the best option to learn more about under-the-hood Linux, short of LFS which I didn't have the patience to try. I'd gotten pretty comfortable with Linux as a user and wanted to learn more of the nuts and bolts. Hence, Slackware.

I used Slack for a while, then tried out Gentoo for a bit because I was enamoured of the idea of everything being compiled from source, and therefore theoretically optimized. That enthusiasm waned over some weeks/months waiting for every little update to compile....

Back to Slack.

Then Ubuntu started making noise so I tried it out for a while around 2005 or so. Then I got annoyed with the fact that I could never figure out the correspondence between the GUI tools and the configuration files I was used to dealing with....

Back to Slack.

Been here ever since. I'm a bit curious about Mint and some others, but it's hard for me to conceive replacing it for daily use at this point.

My story is pretty simple. I was a notorious distro-hopper (and dual/triple booter) for 3-4 years (mostly Fedora Core / Debian / CentOS). I couldn't stick to one distro for more than 3-4 months as there was something missing, broken, annoying, etc. One day I installed Slackware... At first it was 'just another distro' for me. I didn't expect to run it for long, especially that I didn't really understand/appreciate the beauty of manual dependency checking. After some time I noticed that I had stopped booting computer into other distros and mainly booted into Slackware. The more I used it the less I needed other distros so (IIRC) with version 12.2, Slackware has become the only distro that is installed on my computers.

I started using Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 in 2002 before they morphed into the evil SCO. After that I moved to Red Hat 9. I started using Slackware in 2004 with version 10.0. Over the years I've experimented with a variety of distros and BSDs. I always return to Slackware. There is no place like home.

I was an undergrad student studying engineering when I heard about Ubuntu from a few friends. Apparently they would mail you free CD's, awesome! So I decided that I was going to buy a computer to take to class and I would put linux on it so I would have something neat to put on my resume.

I got a little EEEpc and was running EEEbuntu for a few months. It was awesome, a whole new world of computing I didn't know existed, and frankly I didn't really understand. I spent a bunch of time on support forums just reading threads about Linux and the general concensus was that Ubuntu was a noob distribution.. Well, in for a penny in for a pound right?

So I read some guides and tried to install gentoo by doing some sort of chroot magic and bricked my computer.. Then I tried Fedora, Sabayon (bricked during first software update), Debian, and probably a few others. Finally I tried Slackware and it was the first one of the 'hardcore' distros that, if I actually followed the manual, didn't screw up.

It just sort of worked.. My little EEEpc was a tank running Slackware 13.0. I'd take it to class every day, suspend/resume 10 times a day, 4 desktops worth of PDFs, Matlab simulations, OpenOffice docs etc open at all times, uptime in the order of 3-4 weeks.

I work as a graduate with embedded Linux atm, and running slackware has taught me everything I know about linux and helped me get and keep my job!

I've strayed a few times to other distros, but something always makes me say 'I miss slackware' and come back with my tail between my legs

Thank you for that link. The interviews by jeremy with Patrick Volkerding are great. I read that stuff some time ago and – as it is always happens to me – I forgot about that. So it was very pleasant for me to read these interviews once again. If you could be so kind to publish in that threat the link to these interviews once a year I would be very happy to read it once again, and again, and again for all my lifetime. (I am sure that most of the LinuxQuestions.org members have the stronger memory than me but I suppose that a few have almost as weak memory as I have so publishing that link in the constant intervals seems to be a good idea.) It was a great pleasure to read these interviews once again. It is not easy to find something intelligent and inspiring in our times. The interviews with Pat fulfill both those needs. So I am glad that I had an opportunity to read them for the second time – thanks to you.